How easy it was to settle back. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Well, do you think there’s anything in it?”
“Not really, though there are one or two things you can’t quite explain. I mean, for example, me mam and Auntie Ethel went to a seance — Mrs. Mason — and me Auntie Ethel really doesn’t believe in it — I think she’s quite frightened of it, though — anyway, me nanna came through loud and clear. “I’m surprised,” she said, “to see you sat there, our Ethel, being as how you took the ring off my finger as I lay in the coffin.” Well, Auntie Ethel nearly passed out. And as they were going home she says to me mam, ‘You told her that. There’s no way she could’ve known. You told her, didn’t you?’ And me mam just went very quiet. And then she says, ‘How could I have told her? You were alone in the room.’ So that was a dead give-away. And you’ve got to admit, it is odd, isn’t it? I mean, how could Mrs. Mason have known?”
Well. If Auntie Ethel was flashing the ring round every pub in Middlesbrough and some friend of the dead woman happened to recognize it…He nodded. “It is odd.”
“It was the finish of me mam and Auntie Ethel, they’ve not spoken since.”
Good old Mrs. Mason, spreading havoc…“Can I get you another drink?”
“Aye, go on.”
When he sat down again, she said, “I hear you’ve been bombed.”
“Yes, a week ago.”
“Bad?”
“Pretty bad. Not liveable in.”
“So where’s your wife?”
“In the country. We did go to a B&B, but…” He shrugged. “We got bombed out of that too. That’s twice in one week.”
“Will she stay there, do you think?”
“Oh, I think so. The second bomb was a shock.”
Sandra’s tongue came out and deftly removed a mustache of foam from her upper lip. “Good.”
He was left wondering what, exactly, she meant. “You know, the funny thing is, I worked really hard for that house. And do you know, when I looked at it, the only thing I felt was relief? It was like this huge weight…” He flexed his shoulders. “I still feel it. I mean, to be honest, I wish it had been completely flattened because then I wouldn’t have to keep going back.”
“What does your wife think?”
“Oh, she’s devastated.” A pause. “I’m not saying I’m proud of it.”
“You can’t help the way you feel.”
“I know one thing, I’m not going to go and live in a bloody cottage in the country.”
“No, of course not.” She batted away a wasp that was hovering over her glass. “You say you keep going back?”
“Yes, you know, rescuing a few things.”
“So it is stable?”
“Not really.”
He’d spent hours clambering through the ruins, picking up anything he could find, mainly things belonging to Elinor. He had no great desire to rescue his own possessions. At the weekend, he’d piled it all into the boot of the car and driven down to the cottage to lay what he’d managed to salvage at Elinor’s feet. Expiating a guilt he had no reason to feel. Yet.
He caught Sandra looking at him, puzzled by his sudden abstraction. “Anyway, that’s enough about me. How’ve you been?”
“Oh, you know.” She gave a little laugh. “Busy. Tired.”
She wasn’t at ease talking about herself. He could see her making an effort to go on, to reciprocate.
“You missed a few duties.”
“Yes, I went back home for a bit.”
“Nice to have a break…”
She seemed to come to a decision. “Actually, I didn’t really enjoy it all that much, but I just thought I ought to go. Me mam’s not been very good, worried sick about me brother.”
“Where is he? Do you know?”
“Not a clue. He’s in the Marines…”
“Has he just joined up?”
“Oh, no, before the war. He couldn’t get work and when he went down the Labour Exchange they told him he wasn’t entitled to anything because his mother and his sister were working. ‘Is that right?’ he says. And off he goes and joins the Marines. Just like that. And me mam will listen to Lord Haw-Haw. I’ve told her not to, I’m tired of telling her. ‘Where is His Majesty’s ship Repulse? His Majesty’s ship Repulse is at the bottom of the sea.’ Oh God, that voice—it’s like scraping your fingernails down a blackboard. Do you listen?”
“No.”
“Somebody should shoot the bugger. Oh, and the other thing was…” She hesitated. “I had a boyfriend, we weren’t engaged or anything, and he was posted missing at Dunkirk. Of course his mam’s convinced he’s still alive — though I can’t help thinking the Red Cross would’ve found him by now — and of course I have to go and see her, I can’t not, and to be honest…Well, you know. I don’t think we’d ever have got married, but there it is, in her mind we were going to get married, and we still are. I feel such a hypocrite.”
“Well, you’ve no reason to.”
“No, I know. Anyway, I just thought I can’t go on like this, so what did I do?” She raised her glass. “Took a leaf out of me brother’s book.”
“And joined the Marines?”
She laughed. “Nah. Joined the Wrens.” She drained her glass. “I joined up.”
“Good God. I think you deserve another drink.” He picked up the glasses and stood looking down at her. “Something stronger?”
“I’ll have a port and lemon.”
In the last twenty minutes the crowd round the bar had thinned considerably, so he wouldn’t have long to wait. He could see her through the open door. She was tracing a pattern in a puddle of spilled beer, the sunshine finding auburn glints in her brown hair. So she was leaving, then, probably in a couple of weeks. Right from the start the affair, if there was going to be an affair, would be limited; in time and in commitment. Well. He picked up the glasses. That was the one thing necessary to make her utterly irresistible.
He put their drinks down on the table, sat on the bench beside her, closer than before. “Well, there is this: you’ll be a helluva lot safer in the Wrens than you are here.”
She smiled and they clinked glasses.
“By the way, have you told anybody yet?” He meant other members of the team.
“I told bloody Nick. Do you know what he said?”
“Let me guess. ‘Up with the lark, to bed with a Wren.’ ”
Nick was a strange lad. At times he seemed almost simpleminded, but he could spell any word backwards, and tell you in a second how many letters there were. He never looked you in the eye, so it was difficult to know whether you were making contact or not. And he was especially awkward around young women. He’d sidle up to them, make remarks he clearly intended to be flirtatious, but which many of the girls found offensive, even, some of the younger girls particularly, intimidating. No doubt about it, Nick was a problem.
“I hate all that,” Sandra was saying. “You know, the ATS being ‘officers’ groundsheets’—and the WAAF ‘pilots’ cockpits.’ It’s just not true. I know a lot of girls who’ve joined up and none of them are like that.”
“No, I’m sure they’re not.” He hoped Nick’s stupid innuendo wasn’t going to produce a backlash of propriety in Sandra. If it did, he’d personally strangle the little sod. “I think a girl who wants to join up should be entitled to respect, same way as a man.”
She smiled at him. “I suppose you were in the last war?”